*Update 4-19* We anticipate to be rolling out an updated build (encompassing the beta + a few additional items) early in the week of 4/22. We'll be posting more information at that time regarding specifics. Please feel free to utilize the 'performance' beta until that point. It should automatically switch over after the patch updates the main game.

Original Post:

Since users started pre-purchasing AOE II: HD Edition, we’ve been gathering your feedback and working to resolve some of the issues players have been seeing. Simply siphoning all of the information from threads, tweets, posts, and comments has been surprisingly challenging, but we've been blown away by the passion and feedback from everyone. The community team here at Microsoft, and the development team at Hidden Path have been collating and sifting out as much information as possible from a bunch of sources. We’ve got a giant excel sheet with threads, posts and tweets bucketed into categories, and sub sheets for various issues, including information to help us try to get the issues we’re seeing resolved.

Right before launch we launched an update that resolved some of the issues XP users were seeing. Today we have updated a build focused on a number of concerns, and are placing it in as a ‘beta’ for users to start playing right away rather than wait until we move it to the main branch. We do hope to finalize a few additional fixes and get it moved over within the next few days (barring any unforeseen issues).

Performance Beta build Information:

Multiplayer functionality will work only with others on the build. The build does contain an updated version number for visibility. To access the build, simply right click on Age of Empires II: HD Edition in your Steam library, select “Properties” and then choose the “Betas” tab. From there use the drop down to select ‘performance’ and steam should download the update automatically.

While we’re hoping that this does start to help resolve some of the major issues being seen, we can’t promise that this will be a magical silver bullet for everyone. Statistically speaking with so many hardware and software configurations, it’s impossible to guarantee perfection. Some problems, such as errors with computers below minimum system requirements, will likely remain. However, we do hope that for those experiencing issues that are related to the patch notes below, this will help mitigate or alleviate those concerns.

Please note this build is currently only on the “performance build” beta. You may opt into it at any time

Patch Notes for ‘performance build’

Frame rate & performance improvements that increase frame rates up to 50% on low end machines and up to 500% on the high end systems previously experiencing frame rate issues.

Visual fixes:

Windows DPI scaling no longer zooms the in-game perspective

Default scroll speed increased

Multiplayer fixes including:

Quitting a multiplayer game triggers a resignation instead appearing as a ‘drop’

Private lobbies stay private

Quick match no longer crashes

Long Steam usernames no longer cause crash

Hotkeys for multiplayer are correctly saved

Lobby now enforces that you only play multiplayer with the same build version

Visual indications of players in your lobby and in game who have low frame rate

Performance warning if you have high ping to one other player who isn’t host or if your data is being relayed

Multiplayer quick match speed defaults to normal

Quick match has additional map size filter

Multiplayer Lobby doesn’t lock to a region for displaying games

Achievements fix: Single player unlocks achievements properly

There are a number of other things we are continuing to work on and will be addressing as quickly as we’re able. For example, we will be adding in an option for full screen multimonitor in game (instead of alt + enter and alt + shift + enter), as well as an option for mouse bounding to keep your mouse on the game window, as well as a number of additional localization fixes, among other things.